By Lindsay Hunt | May 4, 2011

Photo: Lindsay Hunt

To celebrate May and the upcoming summer months, we are featuring have a one-month action plan with funrecipes, ideas, and tips to get you up, moving, and trim for summer. Get Fit for Summer! has inspired me in my own cooking.

Indigenous to Asia, now common all over the globe, ginger is an impressive healing food. This powerful and medicinal root is widely known as a digestive aid. How many times have you or someone else been recommended Ginger Ale for an upset stomach? This is just one example of ginger’s prominent role as a “healer”. Read More

For your New Years Eve tonight, celebrate with a My Dark and Stormy. You may this seemingly simple cocktail; it only has two ingredients, after all. Combine rum and ginger beer and you’ve got a good My Dark and Stormy. Combine rum and homemade ginger beer, you’ve made a standout cocktail that will impress your guests.

A Dark ‘n’ Stormy is traditionally made with Gosling’s Black Seal rum. Invented in Bermuda after World War I, this cocktail has two patents. Lindsay wrote about my recipe for Ginger Beer on Monday. Read her take on the drink here.

Now that Christmas is over, I’m looking towards New Years, and New Year’s Resolutions, for this week. Next year, I want to challenge myself more in the kitchen, and I want to be more creative. I got a jump start on that resolution this week with Marcus’ recipe for ginger beer. I love anything with ginger, and particularly enjoy ginger beverages. Making a homemade soda was a perfect challenge to set the tone for 2011.

Tonight, Christmas Eve, is when the real celebrations happen for Christmas in Sweden. Today is when Santa comes, and all the kids get super excited about presents. The meal is a big deal too, and always ends with gingersnaps. These cookies are my take on the delicious dessert.

Check out my other recommendations for the perfect Swedish Christmas Table here. And of course, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and God Jul!

You can substitute high-quality candied citrus peel for the homemade. Avoid supermarket candied peel; good candied orange peel is available at gourmet markets and online.

By Suzannah Schneider

Meet the Team

Whether it’s finding the best goat tacos in LA, spotting a well-worn vintage bag in Sweden, or interviewing the “crab man” selling seafood on a corner in Harlem, we tell stories seen from Chef Marcus Samuelsson‘s point of view. MarcusSamuelsson.com strives to create conversations about food, nutrition, culture, art, and design. We want to find Read More